Honeywell Laboratories, USA.
Center for Translational Neuroscience, University of Oregon, USA.
Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2024 Aug;166:107061. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2024.107061. Epub 2024 Apr 23.
This review article was awarded the Dirk Hellhammer award from ISPNE in 2023. It explores the dynamic relationship between stressors and stress from a historical view as well as a vision towards the future of stress research via virtual reality (VR). We introduce the concept of a "syncytium," a permeable boundary that blurs the distinction between stress and stressor, in order to understand why the field of stress biology continues to inadequately measure stress alone as a proxy for the force of external stressors. Using Virtual Reality (VR) as an illustrative example to explicate the black box of stressors, we examine the distinction between 'immersion' and 'presence' as analogous terms for stressor and stress, respectively. We argue that the conventional psychological approaches to stress measurement and appraisal theory unfortunately fall short in quantifying the force of the stressor, leading to reverse causality fallacies. Further, the concept of affordances is introduced as an ecological or holistic tool to measure and design a stressor's force, bridging the gap between the external environment and an individual's physiological response to stress. Affordances also serve to ameliorate shortcomings in stress appraisal by integrating ecological interdependencies. By combining VR and psychobiological measures, this paper aims to unravel the complexity of the stressor-stress syncytium, highlighting the necessity of assessing both the internal and external facets to gain a holistic understanding of stress physiology and shift away from reverse causality reasoning. We find that the utility of VR extends beyond presence to include affordance-based measures of immersion, which can effectively model stressor force. Future research should prioritize the development of tools that can measure both immersion and presence, thereby providing a more comprehensive understanding of how external stressors interact with individual psychological states.
这篇综述文章获得了 2023 年 ISPNE 的 Dirk Hellhammer 奖。它从历史的角度以及通过虚拟现实（VR）展望未来的压力研究，探讨了压力源和压力之间的动态关系。我们引入了“合胞体”的概念，这是一个可渗透的边界，模糊了压力和压力源之间的区别，以理解为什么压力生物学领域仍然不能单独测量压力作为外部压力源的力的替代物。我们使用虚拟现实（VR）作为说明性示例来阐明压力源的黑箱，分别检查了“沉浸”和“存在”作为压力源和压力的类似术语之间的区别。我们认为，传统的压力测量方法和应激理论在量化压力源的力方面存在不足，导致了反向因果关系的谬误。此外，还引入了可供性的概念，作为一种生态或整体工具来测量和设计压力源的力，弥合了外部环境与个体对压力的生理反应之间的差距。可供性还通过整合生态相互依存关系来改善压力评估的缺点。通过结合 VR 和心理生物学测量，本文旨在揭示压力源-压力合胞体的复杂性，强调需要评估内部和外部方面，以全面了解压力生理学，并从反向因果推理中转变。我们发现，VR 的效用不仅限于存在，还包括基于可供性的沉浸式测量，这可以有效地模拟压力源的力。未来的研究应优先开发能够测量沉浸式和存在式的工具，从而更全面地了解外部压力源如何与个体的心理状态相互作用。
